How do I manage working mom guilt?

I'm your host, Tiffany Sauder. And this is Scared Confident. Another question that I got at my Tiffany surprise attack at tables asking for questions was, and this word is a buzzword for working with. This woman had shared with me. She'd had a baby in the last 18 months and she said, how do I manage the guilt of putting time towards my baby and my career?

And she said his work and personal actually compartmentalized. So guilt is like one of those words, right. That we say. And if you've been listening to scare confident, I've got a really strong perspective on this idea of guilt. The first one is. I would ask you if you're listening to this and this young woman, if she's, if she's listening, do you actually feel guilty or do you feel guilty because you think you're supposed to feel guilty?

Like, do you actually feel guilty about leaving your baby to actually feel guilty about this way that you're balancing baby and your kids and your, and your career? Or do you say that you feel guilty because you think that you are a bad mom, if you don't say that you feel guilty? What I found in my heart is I actually didn't feel good.

I actually loved the fact that I have, I had a career and I loved the fact that I had children and I understood that that required some division of my time, every single day. And I was really comfortable actually with the division that that was taking. I just said I felt guilty because I felt like I was a monster.

If I didn't say I felt guilty. And so for me, I was like, I don't actually feel guilty. I am just saying, I feel guilty because that feels like the record I'm supposed to play. So do you actually feel guilty? If you do feel guilty, then that likely means that some part of your decisions are in congruent with your values.

And that is what you actually need to interrogate. It's not the baby that is causing problems. It's not the career that is causing problems. It's your decision making in the way that you're deciding what part of your day each one of those things are going to take up. And this really, really, to me, is an adjacent topic to this concept of balance, which I think also is a really stupid topic.

It's not stupid, but it's a little bit stupid. I think it's stupid. Any single day is imbalanced. Some of my days take 80% of my family takes 80% of my energy and my job takes 20%. Some days it's the opposite. Like. And if you are going to achieve exceptional things in all areas of your life, it is going to require some level of imbalance.

And I get kind of grumpy also when people project their definition of balance into somebody else's life own it. If you're feeling guilty, there's probably some part of your definition of balance. That's in-congruent. And so that's why you're feeling guilty. If you don't actually feel guilty and you're going like balls out on your job and you have to leave your kids a lot for a season of time.

And you're like, yeah, this was my choice, then own it. And don't let somebody else's perspective of the fact that you're leaving your kids too much, get you off center. If that's actually what you've chosen to do, we're grownups, we get to pick what it is that we do and so own those decisions. So I'm not going to keep going on and on about this.

I think we have the opportunity as women, as parents to do two exceptional things in our lives. To put our energy and our heart and our talents to work in the professional setting so that we can experience growth, achievement, failure, relationships, community. To me, that is like the test kitchen for life.

That's what my job is. And I also. Have this amazing opportunity to be a mom, to these four amazing girls. And that's an incredible journey and the things I learned in my business life, I'm a better parent because I learned I've been learning how to be a leader for 20 years. I'm a better parent because I know how to concisely communicate.

I'm a better parent because I'm more comfortable stepping into conflict. I'm a better spouse because I can articulate my emotions in a way that I think if I wasn't in the professional environment, I wouldn't be as good at that. So I think we have a choice to see them as symbiotic that they actually serve one another.

There are not two opposing forces trying to split us in half that maybe it's actually two forces that are making us whole. And when I say it that way, it's actually how I feel about my life. I have these two amazing roles that I get to play and they come together to form a complete version of my adult self.

So they do both take time. It is messy and complicated to figure out how they fit together. I'm not going to glamorize that piece of it. That if you sincerely feel called to both of these roles, I think it's worth the fight to figure out how to get them to fit together in a way that you don't feel guilt, but you actually feel peace.

You feel a sense of confidence that the decisions you're making are serving your goals. And if you show up and control the things that you can control, That you'll look back and say, I'm pleased. I'm at peace with my choices and with the outcomes of what happened.

So what else is on your mind? Text me 3, 1 7. 3 5 0 8 9 2 1 3 1 7 3 5 0 8 9 2 1. And be sure to follow along on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for listening today. .

‍